Sport research/Presenting your work

There are lots of ways to present your work, whilst the focus is on the traditional academic stand-up style presentations a number of ways you can present your work are discussed.

Time to impress the crowds

Oral Presentation

There is nothing like practice and you will often have no idea how you come across until you get feedback from others or even video record yourself and review it.

Content

The content will clearly depend on the purpose, but a typical post-research presentation will include:

• Background

Keep this tight, its not a literature review, just creating context for the audience.

• Significance

Don't assume the audience can see the importance of the work, point it out.

• Aims/Objectives/Hypotheses

Add the scientific rigour and rationale for the work

• Methods

Give a good account of what happened, but you probably won't need the nitty gritty.

• Results

Present the results of interest (generally not everything) and do so

• Discussion

Discuss the results, how do the results fit with any hypotheses or aims, what was unexpected - how can this be explained, perhaps note some limitations of the work and place your findings within the wider context of research in the area.

• Practical relevance

So how does the work contributed to the real world?

• Conclusion

Wrap it all up for everyone so it's nice and clear.

• Questions

Sometimes it's a good idea to keep some information back, not the important stuff, but something that you think you might get asked about... then you can impress the audience with your witty answer.

Style

Make sure you present yourself in an appropriate manner, so dress suitable and don't slouch. None of the There are the obvious style tips such as don't rush, speak clearly, look out at the audience, don't have too much writing on each slide, but there are other important tips too. Make sure you use images and figures effectively. Physically turn and point aspects out, use a laser pointer, the mouse or your hand. It can help to explain a concept related to your work, or the methods or of course the results. Most results are presented more effectively as figures and in this day and age of infographics, there are lots of options, don't get stuck on traditional figures if your data is better represented another way (but maybe keep the traditional in a few slides after the presentation for when questions come up) . If the image does not contribute to the story you are telling though, don't use it.

How much writing do you put on a slide? Enough to give the audience something to focus on, but not enough that you don't have to talk at all.

Poster Presentation

The resource compiled by Will Hopkins on creating posters has become outdated in respect to the available printing options now common, but many of the common element and tips remain true. Printing options now include relatively cheap printing on materials such as satin on A0 but the options are seemingly endless, limited to your imagination and any requirements placed on you by teachers/conference organisers etc. All of these can be easily created using programs such as Microsoft's Powerpoint, or Apple's Keynote, not to mention much more powerful graphic's programs. Tip: It's easy to change the dimensions of the slides on these programs in settings so you don't loose quality by blowing up the presentation at print time.

Make the poster stand out and look attractive, but you still need to fit in the important stuff, just the same as for the oral presentation above. You need to put enough information on the poster that effectively transmits the scientific values of the research, but don't put too much information that the poster looks "busy" or the writing is too small to read from a few metres away. It is not likely to be easy and you need to gain a powerful control of concise language.

Online

Check out the Australian Creative Commons Information pack for more information on open licesnsing of work.

Leigh Blackall has produced a video on Wikiversity: Copyright options and finding and using free media workshop

Task

1. Create a poster and/or presentation.
2. Present in front of peers/supervisors as well as video-tape it.
3. Review the feedback and the video, makes notes on what you would change and why.
4. Edit as required.

Resources

Oral Presentations

• Hopkin's has resources for when you give a talk
• How to give a good 15 minute talk by Scott Keogh
• How NOT to give a talk
• The University of New South Wales has a site called Seminar Presentations
• Germano (2003), The Scholarly Lecture: How to Stand and Deliver, The Chronicle gives some good tips.
• Simon L. Peyton Jones, John Hughes, and John Launchbury (2005) How to give a great research talk makes interesting points.
• There is a YouTube video called: Crash course: Improve your virtual presentation skills which has some worthwhile tips

Posters

• Hopkin's has resources for when you create a poster.
• Designing scientific posters by Colin Purrington
• Creating an Effective Scientific Poster Presentation from University of Minnesota.
• Poster presentations by Gary Ritchison
• Expanded guidelines for Giving a Poster Presentation Prepared for the American Society of Primatologists
• POSTER PRESENTATIONS: A guide to a successful scientific poster presentation by Susan Koskinen, Physics-Astronomy Library, University of California - Berkeley

Video

• Youtube video of Garr Reynolds discussing and challenging presentation techniques.

See also

• Technical writing/Presenting